Asian-Origin Approved COVID-19 Vaccines and Current Status of COVID-19 Vaccination Program in Asia: A Critical Analysis

Chiranjib Chakraborty,Ashish Ranjan Sharma,Govindasamy Agoramoorthy,Sang-Soo Lee,Manojit Bhattacharya

doi:10.3390/vaccines9060600

Abstract

COVID-19 vaccination has started throughout the globe. The vaccination program has also begun in most Asian countries. This paper analyzed the Asian-origin COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination program status in Asia till March 2021 under three sections. In the first section, we mapped the approved vaccines that originated from Asia, their technological platforms, collaborations during vaccine development, and regulatory approval from other countries. We found that a total of eight Asian COVID-19 vaccines originated and got approval from three countries: China, India, and Russia. In the second section, we critically evaluated the recent progress of COVID-19 vaccination programs. We analyzed the overall vaccination status across the Asian region. We also calculated the cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in different Asian countries, vaccine rolling in 7-day average in various Asian countries, and COVID-19 vaccine per day doses administrated in several Asian countries. We found that China and India vaccinated the maximum number of people. Finally, we evaluated the factors affecting the COVID-19 vaccination program in Asia, such as vaccine hesitancy, basic reproduction numbers (R0) and vaccination campaigns, and the cost of the vaccines. Our analysis will assist the implementation of the COVID-19 vaccination program successfully in Asia.

Highlights

COVID-19 spread to different parts of Asia, and the number of infections was very high in Turkey, India, Indonesia, and Iran [3,4,5,6]
In December 2020, we did an overall survey to understand the scenario of the COVID-19 vaccine development, and we found that 55 vaccine candidates have entered different phases of the clinical trial (27 candidates in the phase-I, 23 candidates in phase-IIl, and 5 candidates in phase-III clinical trial) [22]
We evaluated the demographic coverage in some Asian countries using the COVID-19 vaccination

Summary

Introduction

COVID-19 has created a public health emergency and presently is a global concern. This disease has caused more than 127 million infections and over 2.78 million deaths worldwide as of early 2020 [1]. The disease started in China and ended up across the world. There was a rapid rise in the infection rate during the first 3–4 months of 2020, reaching up to 80%. The infection rate fell to 65% after implementing global travel restrictions [2]. COVID-19 spread to different parts of Asia, and the number of infections was very high in Turkey, India, Indonesia, and Iran [3,4,5,6]. The middle to low-income countries in Asia and the Asia-Pacific regions were the worst affected [6]

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Conclusion